Citizenship Status, Ethno-National Origin and Entitlement to Rights: Majority Attitudes towards Minorities and Immigrants in Israel

In this paper I consider the applicability of liberal, ethno-national and post-national perspectives of citizenship to the concept of membership in Israeli society. I examine attitudes of Jews regarding the allocation of social rights to new immigrants arriving under the Law of Return, Israeli Arabs, and labour migrants. Analysis shows that the framework that guides access to the goods of citizenship displays a hierarchical mode that reflects two main membership discourses. The first is the liberal discourse, which differentiates between citizens (Jewish immigrants and Arabs) and non-citizens (labour migrants) in entitlement to rights. The second is the ethno-national discourse which discriminates between Jewish and Arab citizens. Although the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens is evident, the impact of ‘citizenship status’ on discriminatory attitudes to out-group members is stronger than the impact of ‘ethnic origin’ (i.e. Arab) migrants in Israel.